Don Norman, a usability design specialist, writes about how the GUI has become a very complex part of modern programs and argues that the general-purpose computer is now inappropriate, as the GUI paradigm as we know it is incapable of efficiently encapsulating all the information we require for our daily work.

I disagree. I believe this kind of approach is the easy way out. An excuse for the incapability of the IT industry to innovate, instead of perpetuating the milking of the modern society’s dependence on computing machinery through sub-par products. True, the ‘classic’, 30 year-old GUI paradigms we’ve been using in commercial products since the Apple Lisa and the Macintosh, and much later Windows, is dated. And, true, it is completely inefficient when we’re talking thousands of files, hundreds of programs and thousands of relationships, interconnections and interactions between them. But, surely, this challenge can better be solved through innovation, through revolutionary design and not by building specific-purpose computers. The latter would certainly satisfy Microsoft, where Mr. Norman works, as it would have to just sit back and continue seeing its funds increase, as people would require more and more specific-purpose computers in their daily lives, all without raising a finger. I guess companies like Microsoft – and to some extent Apple – are locked into their existing systems, their existing platforms and their existing functionality, in the same way users of their systems are locked into the commercial software they depend on and have invested in.
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